


call out my name

by shizuoh



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (obvious spoilers), Amnesia, Aquaphobia, Gen, M/M, Memory Loss, Mild Sexual Content, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 05:18:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14537514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shizuoh/pseuds/shizuoh
Summary: Steve stares at the photo and it feels as if the face before him is blank. Scratched out. Turned into dust.Opening his mouth, he tries to form his mouth around the letters of his name. No sound comes out. He clutches the vial around his neck a little tighter.(or: thanos snapped his fingers and half the universe disappeared like they were nothing. the ones who were left behind, and spared—their memories start to disappear, too.)





	call out my name

**Author's Note:**

> so. yeah. you all knew this was coming.
> 
> (obvious spoilers ahead. don't get angry at me if you see something you didn't want to.)
> 
> this is my first ever marvel fic. please be gentle. i wanted to play around with this idea me and a friend had; it's pretty sad, i warn you that. the ending to this story is more bittersweet and sad than anything, with a very choppy narrative throughout. turn back now if you don't want to see that.
> 
> (this is dedicated to kermes, who listens to me whine about infinity war and everything that comes with that.)

"Oh, God."

That's all he can say in this moment. He feels the ashes underneath his fingertips, still warm, still floating as if the body that was just fighting next to him were taking its last breath. His entire body begins to tremble and shake, and out of the corner of his eyes he sees his friends—the ones who haven't disappeared,  _what kind of fairness is that—_ coming towards him. So he presses his hand firmly against the ground and grits his teeth, refusing to show any weakness in this moment. He can't. Not now. Or he will never find himself again.

Steve pushes himself up, careful to avoid stepping on what was once his friend, his companion, his lover. 

"Cap?" comes someone's voice, someone recognizable but he can't think straight enough to comprehend the words correctly. It's not the  _Steve?_  that became the last words his childhood friend ever spoke—just like on the train, the speeding train, all the white and the snow and the wetness of his tears in that bombed-out bar—

"Are you alright?" asks another.

"Fine," Steve answers automatically. He has to be. If he falls, if he lets himself think any more deeper about it, he will never come back out. And he can't quit now, not when half the universe is gone and faded away and there are aftermaths to deal with. "I'm fine," he says again, one more time, to affirm himself more than anyone else.

He's fine.

 

* * *

 

("It always ends in a fight," Bucky said to him, donned in his disguise, his mind just barely starting to work itself back together.

What sort of ending is  _this?_  There is a fight but there is also none. There is no body to bury. There is no mind to rework.

Bucky just got himself back, and now he is gone.

Steve puts his ashes in a vial and wears it around his neck. It grounds him, for now.)

 

* * *

 

He doesn't find out until later that Sam is gone. So is Wanda. And T'Challa. And that strange tree creature who showed up on the Wakandan battlefield with Thor. The rest of them were spared, in Thanos' fair—unfair—fifty-fifty decision. 

 _We don't trade lives,_  he had said, but given the chance he would gladly sacrifice himself for any of his friends to come back. 

 

* * *

 

The rest of them team up to find where Thanos went and take the Infinity Stones from him, so they can, at least, reverse time and figure out how to bring their friends back.

They reunite with Tony. He comes back from space, of all places, beaten and broken and his eyes sunken and soulless. He tells him everyone disappeared and the Peter Parker kid died right in his arms— _it's all my fault,_  he explains, and that's the end of it.

There are no hugs. There's a handshake that lasts about five seconds and that's that. It's hard to show emotions—Steve almost feels as if he were to show guilt, to show happiness, to show sadness over anything, he would disappear along with everyone else. He doesn't want to appear  _weak;_  that would mean they have lost.

(He has already lost everything.)

 

* * *

 

"Who else do we have to bring back?" Tony asks.

"Bucky," Steve says automatically, and Tony gives him a look he ignores, then goes on, "Wanda, T'Challa..." His voice trails off, his mouth hanging open. There were  _more,_  weren't there? His mind is blank with the name and he feels as if it's on the tip of his tongue but no words come out.

"Groot," Thor supplies after a moment.

"Right," Steve says, shaking his head. "Right."

He can't even remember who  _Groot_  is. Or what he looked like.

(Did Wanda actually disappear?)

 

* * *

 

The first time he realizes something is up is when he wakes up a few days after the battle and discovers he cannot remember Sam's last name.

He asks Tony.  _Wilson,_  he says, looking startled.

Steve grabs the vial of Bucky's dust and swallows thickly. His throat is dry. Tony is staring at him.

"I think it's more than just them disappearing," he finally says.

 

* * *

 

The longer the people they love are gone the more memories of them disappear, too. 

It's proven on the fourth day after the battle, when Thor, for the life of him, can't recall who Sam is. Tony doesn't know who Wanda is, despite having locked her in the Avengers headquarters and keeping her to the premises no matter what. When Steve tells them, they seem to remember for a split second, but the memory is gone as soon as it's revived.

The vial around his neck becomes heavier. He could never forget his friends. Ever.

(Right?)

 

* * *

 

Every hour he repeats the names of the fallen in his head over and over. 

By the fifth day, he can only say their first names.

 _And Groot,_  Thor adds.

Steve wants to punch himself. He doesn't know who that is.

 

* * *

 

(He now knows what it's like to have your mind and your memories wiped away with the snap of one's fingers.

His memories of his friends—friends? or enemies?—are crumbling away like the wind that took their dust away. 

Is this how Bucky felt? In that chair, with the machine that took James Barnes away and replaced it with the Winter Soldier? 

It's terrifying. Steve can feel them slipping away but he can't do anything about it.)

 

* * *

 

He digs through file after file until he finds photos of his friends, determined to keep them and cherish them before they slip away forever. He finds a photo of Bucky in the cryochamber. A photo of Sam with a small child—a nephew? son? brother?—and a picture of Wanda with her late brother. There's none of the weird tree creature Thor keeps talking about—he's gone.

Steve gives Tony a picture of Peter. He holds it to his chest and sobs.

"I can hardly remember his face," he says through his tears, and Steve does not admit he feels the same.

 

* * *

 

_Bucky Barnes, James Buchanan Barnes, Sam Wilson, T'Challa—Sam, Bucky, Bucky Barnes, Peter?—Peter Parker?—no—Bucky, Bucky, Sam W—Will?—Sam Wilson, T'Challa, James, Parker, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky—_

 

* * *

 

 _T'Challa,_  Okoye says, aghast,  _how could you forget T'Challa?_

Steve racks his brain for any recollection. 

There is nothing.

 

* * *

 

Soon, the only one left is Bucky, and even remembering him is a task in itself.

He could never forget his best friend, the one he has loved for lifetimes. But fate has a funny way of playing games, and soon Steve can't remember what Bucky looked like as a child, how they met, or his mother's name.

 

* * *

 

("Stevie," says Bucky, all those years ago, his hand running along the line of Steve's scrawny arm. " _Steve,_  " he says again, firmer this time, but his voice trembles.

Steve doesn't say anything. He raises his arms so Bucky can slip his shirt off his body.  _What are we doing?_  he wants to ask, but his voice will fail him, and if he questions, he fears he will miss his chance.

Everything had been leading up to this. The stolen glances in the dark, the lingering touches. They linger now even, when Bucky runs his hands down Steve's neck and collarbones and chest, the blush on his body spreading with the touch. Steve shivers when the cold hits his body, and Bucky scoops him in his arms and kisses him like he's dying.

It's flushed and desperate and messy, and neither of them say nothing but one another's names and mouthed, silent declarations of  _I love you_  into sweaty skin. Neither of them mention Bucky's deployment. 

Steve watches his best friend off the next morning, and does not tell him about Dr. Erskine.)

 

* * *

 

Even the most vivid of memories are becoming difficult to picture. Everything has holes in it. The feel of Bucky's skin and the taste of his lips is like a distant friend. The sound of him moaning his name and digging his nails into his arms is like a dream. 

He questions. Is it real? Is it fake? 

For a moment, in the back of his mind, he wonders if  _Bucky Barnes_  was a fantasy.

 

* * *

 

Steve read so many books and fantasies in his youth that he thought he knew of every possibility in the world, of every trial in life, of every mythical creature and villain and the magic and monsters.

The Infinity Stones are a different kind of magic, and Thanos is a different kind of monster. Aliens coming from the sky was just the beginning. Sometimes he wishes he could go back to the ice, go to sleep, forget about all this.

But you forget what you want to remember, and remember what you want to forget. 

He refuses to give up, even if he thinks that half of his friends were just fantasies and the ones who still live walk around like zombies on a mission. Life is to be lived, he thinks, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play face in certain defeat.

So, the moment he sees Thanos, he will punch the gauntlet right off of him, and then some.

 

* * *

 

 _Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change,_  Steve thinks he read in a book once.

Steve remembers only the bad and none of the good. He remembers Bucky crying after a hard beating from his dad. He doesn't remember the way Bucky would smile whenever Sarah Rogers would give him a pat on the head and an extra slice of pie to go. He remembers screaming and punching and the way Bucky had looked at him with such murderous intent and disdain when he said  _Who the hell is Bucky?_

Bucky. A name Steve has trouble remembering in the morning.

Watching the love of his life being scattered into dusts moments after rising from getting the life punched out of you by an intergalactic super villain? The soft, frightened call of his name as first goes his arm, then his legs, then the rest of him when his body collides with the ground?

A great and sudden change, alright.

 

* * *

 

(After the Hydra camp Bucky had been quiet. He had flinched at every touch. Steve sometimes caught him mumbling his information in his sleep. Waking him resulted in screaming.

After a few days he let Steve touch him again. Their first night together like this, whimpers muffled against lips and skin and halting in case someone would hear, was even more frightening.

When it was all said and done, Bucky leaned over, kissed Steve, and said, "None of those other things makes a difference, y'hear? Love is the strongest thing in the world. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we’re safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is."

Steve had raised an eyebrow at him.

With his grin, Bucky had looked over and said, "Read it in one of your books." After a pause, he bit at his lower lip and continued, "I'm scared. My body is doing things it never has before. I feel... different. Raw. Unhinged."

"You're fine," Steve had said immediately, reaching up to touch him.

"You're the one who gives me strength, you know?" Bucky's voice was watery. "When I love you I feel like I can do anything, and nobody can touch me because I love you." He shifts underneath the blankets and turns to fully face Steve. "You're big and strong now, huh? I can't protect you anymore."

"Of course you can," Steve says, his voice light. He kisses Bucky's eyelids. "I'm scared too, alright. We can protect each other."

"Right."

Not even a few days later, Steve watched Bucky reach out for him as he fell farther and father into the snowy abyss.)

 

* * *

 

 

The most terrifying thing about Wakanda, Steve thinks, is how there is a large lake right next to one of the windows of the palace. He stands by it one day, staring deep into the water, so deep you can't see your own reflection or anything down below.

He thinks of when he crashed the plane into the ice, when the air ships exploded and he fell into the lake below, only to have someone yank him out, and anxiety closes his throat.

Steve doesn't like water.

 

* * *

 

 

Tony stares at a photo he doesn't recognize for seemingly hours on end. His calls to Pepper are short and bitter. 

"I've lost," he says to Steve, and retreats to his room for the rest of the day.

 

* * *

 

Steve admires Thor's ability to keep himself together amidst it all.

He lost his mother, his father, his brother and his sister, and many of his closest friends. But he helps the Wakandans as best as they can in their absence of a king—did they have a king in the first place?—with a smile on his face and determination in his eyes.

The vial swinging around his neck, Steve wishes he could feel the same. He rarely smiles anymore.

 

* * *

 

(There is a boy whose face he doesn't recognize smiling down at him with a bloody nose and a black eye. He holds a hand out for Steve to take and helps him up, saying, "My name is—" And the rest is garbled nonsense he can't hear.)

 

* * *

 

Shuri becomes queen. With a somber look on her face that doesn't seem to fit, she works on Vision day and night.

Steve cannot help but think this feels wrong.

 

* * *

 

(There is a boy whose face he doesn't recognize dancing with a pretty lady at a party, lights sparkling and flashing all above them. Steve sits aside, watching them, and he thinks,  _if he asked, I would be his._  )

 

* * *

 

Tony loses it. He ends up going back home to Pepper, photo of a smiling boy in a strange spider costume in tow.

It leaves the rest to find Thanos. Whatever is left of SHIELD decides he may be on a different planet.

Wakandan technology and what was left of the battle a week ago is their only hope, and their best shot, of making it. They need the Stones. 

"There is no other option," Thor decides, looking down at his new weapon thoughtfully. It's flashy, Steve thinks. "With enough strength perhaps I could summon the Bifrost to take us."

Steve nods. "Then we just need to find out what planet."

"On it," says Shuri.

 

* * *

 

(There is a boy whose face he doesn't recognize swallowing down bottle after bottle of cheap alcohol, coughing and giggling when he just throws it back up. He smells disgusting, he probably looks disgusting, but Steve thinks he is the most beautiful thing to exist. He is lovelier than the storm, and everything after it. Steve remembers thinking,  _I'd destroy anything that tries to touch you and change you, and in a hundred lifetimes, I'd choose to walk into love with you._  )

 

* * *

 

Days turn into weeks. 

Almost every memory is gone.

Except for B—

The vial feels heavy.

He can't remember a name anymore.

 

* * *

 

(There is a man whose face he doesn't recognize, who kisses him senseless and touches him with all the care in the world. He loves him when Steve is small and he loves him when he is big. 

And he loves him when he falls, and when he comes back.

When he says _You're my mission_  and attacks him without a second thought.

When he punches Steve to the ground and pounds on him with all the anger and hatred he could ever feel.

When he pulls him out of the water and leaves him on the side so he would not drown.

When he goes on the run and writes about his memories in a small book he keeps with him always.

He loves him, because his reality is worse than his dreams and Steve resides in both, and because he has never known anything but.

And he loves him even when he's gone and dead, and the worse part is that Steve can't even remember his name, or a face.)

 

* * *

 

In the photo, a sleeping man is frozen in a cryochamber, his face turned upwards and his expression tired. Steve stares at the photo and it feels as if the face before him is blank. Scratched out. Turned into dust.

Opening his mouth, he tries to form his mouth around the letters of his name. No sound comes out. He clutches the vial around his neck a little tighter.

He does not remember this man. He does not remember a name or a face or the sound of his voice or what he may have felt like.

But he remembers love. He remembers sadness. And he remembers a figure turning into dust before his very eyes.

Whoever this man may be, Steve vows to bring him back. He cannot live on, he cannot survive, until he does. It will eat him alive.

(His dust is in the vial around his neck, after all.)

(He must be important.)

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **ash** \- Yesterday at 9:30 PM  
>  oh no way  
> they didnt really die they kind of just were erased from existence
> 
>  **kermeme** \- Yesterday at 9:31 PM  
>  but the four who died beforehand- heimdall, loki, gamora, and vision- might be dead dead
> 
>  **ash** \- Yesterday at 9:31 PM  
>  but if thanos destroyed half the universe and they faded away i wonder if everyone who didnt is going to eventually forget about them...
> 
> [tumblr](http://haikuyus.tumblr.com/)


End file.
